Points of Similarity
by Experimental
Summary: Cathrine and Trowa learn the results of a sibling test. Historiette. Cathy POV.


Points of Similarity 

.. .. 

I'll never forget the feeling that came over me when he called me to say the test results had come in. For a moment my body went numb and it felt like it belonged to someone else. The placement of everything on the kitchen counter appeared to me in excruciating detail, feeling alien, and I remember being vaguely ashamed that I had let it become such a mess. Then I came back to myself, and my heart started pounding, even though I had not yet heard what those results were. "That's great," I managed to say after a moment. 

We agreed to look at them together, when we were ready. I can't say that I ever was ready for something like that. You tell yourself you won't care what the results are, that either way you will make the best of it. 

But in your mind you've already decided what you want them to be. 

They sat on the coffee table between us, inside an opened manila envelope. I stared at it from the couch, my knees against my chest, and was unaware that I was twisting my curls. Bad habit; I clasped my hands around my legs. He, on the other hand, sat calmly in the dinette chair, looking at me. It made me nervous, made me feel like he was calling me a wimp inside his head, like that look that came into his eyes during our act. I picked up the envelope, grasped the edge of the paper in my fingertips— 

And froze. Suddenly my muscles wouldn't work that way. I lowered it again. 

He said, "Do you want me to read it for you?" 

"No, it's okay," I said, willing myself strength; then I thought that if he didn't it would never get read. I vacillated. "Then again, maybe . . . Only if you want to." 

He got up, and I leaned across the table to hand him the envelope. He grunted slightly when he sat back down, like I remember my father used to do, then without any of my hesitation withdrew the paper from the envelope and studied it. With the envelope at its back, I couldn't see anything through the paper. The moment that passed before he said anything was like a vacuum that sucked up sound, and it seemed so long, though if someone replayed it for me it would probably prove to be no longer than a heartbeat. 

"It's negative," he said. "No match." 

He didn't sound surprised, and there was something about the way he said it that I could tell he hadn't kept his promise. 

"What does that mean?" 

I knew what it meant. 

"It means we're not related." 

My muscles suddenly worked and I grabbed the paper from his hand. I stared at the chart, at the conclusion, knowing the schooling to get the gist of them was in my mind, but it might as well have been in an ancient language no one could read anymore. Too much information to process, to sit down and sort out from start to finish. Where could I even begin? 

"Are you sure? There isn't a chance it's inaccurate? I thought siblings didn't always share the same genes." 

"We went with the mitochondria test after all, remember? It's either the same or it isn't. It's that simple." 

"Okay . . . But that just means we don't have the same mother, right?" 

I didn't care what I was suggesting about my own family. I was grasping at straws. I couldn't admit the truth that was right in front of me, to myself. 

"We can take the STR test if you want, but this is still the best you're going to get." He paused. "I thought you'd be excited. This is good news," he said. "Isn't it?" 

There was something I never heard often in his tone of voice. In any other person I would have called it relief. It made me angry. For the second time it felt like he had betrayed me. No. Like he had abandoned me. Why should it be good news? I thought. Was it true that all this time he had thought of me as . . . something else? 

"No, it's not," I said. "How can I be excited?" 

His tone changed instantly. "All I meant was, it's good to know once and for all, and not have to wonder all the time in the back of our minds: are we or aren't we." 

He must have seen from my face I didn't exactly share his analysis of the situation. 

"You knew the result would either be one or the other—" 

"I know!" I said. I knew he didn't actually think I was stupid. But . . . "But I was really hoping." It still hurt. 

"I really wanted you to be him." 

"I'm sorry, Cathy," he said after a couple minutes. To some extent, he meant it. And I, for my part, knew he was to blame for none of it. I was the one who had pushed him, who had gotten her hopes up, who had gone looking for answers. He was right when he said it answered the question we'd always had stuck like a wall of glass between us. But that was all it answered. It only proved he wasn't Triton Bloom. 

We stared at the two slips of paper sitting on the coffee table until late, and I felt us grow farther and farther adrift. A dozen points of dissimilarity separated us from one another, and slowly I became an island once again. 

In fact, I always had been. 


End file.
